After installing Acrobat 8, can only open Word in safe mode

Question

After installing Acrobat 8, can only open Word in safe mode. If I delete my customized Normal.dot, then all is well. However I want the macros available from the customized Normal.dot. I tried switching Templates after opening Word and it immediately triggers an error message: "Word has encountered a problem and needs to close." It then recovers all my recent documents even though they were fine, had no need to be saved. Thinking that Normal.dot had been corrupted, I went back to the original M$ Normal.dot and re-created my macros and saved as a new Normal.dot. The next time I open Word, I get the error message.
I have a template with only one macro. It does not cause this problem. The template I prefer has 3 macros and I will need to create more.
Acrobat 8 Prof. with all updates
Windows XP
Word 2003 SP 3 with updates
Thank you in advance for any help you may give.

Answer 1

I am told by my company's IT folks that the problem resides with Office 2003 sp3. If you remove SP3 and revert to SP2, the issue vanishes, so they say (I have not done it yet).
M$ is possibly ignoring the issue permanently, since they are on a new initiative to unseat PDF in favor of their own document format they're working on presently. I've sent a million error reports to them and....NOTHING.
Good luck.
PS- if you've found another solution, please send me an e-mail @ [email protected]